LIVE FROM CES 2018, LAS VEGAS: Qualcomm touted the success of its business diversification efforts, unveiling partnerships with big names in the automotive and smart home markets.

In a presentation on the opening day, the company also announced Samsung, Google, HTC, LG, Sony will all include its RF front end chips in premium-tier devices.

“Consumers around the globe demand powerful signal strength, even in the most difficult conditions. Samsung can deliver this thanks to Qualcomm Technologies’ end-to-end integrated modem and RF offerings,” YeonJeong Kim, Samsung Mobile’s VP of R&D, said in a statement.

Smart home strides
On the smart home front, Qualcomm president Cristiano Amon (pictured) announced collaborations with Google, Amazon and Microsoft to provide support for their respective virtual assistants. Specifically, Microsoft’s Cortana will now be integrated into Qualcomm’s mesh networking and smart speaker audio platforms. Amazon’s Alexa and Google’s Assistant have also been integrated into Qualcomm’s smart audio platform.

Coupled with previous announcements related to Alibaba and Baidu’s smart speaker technologies, Amon said customers can now use Qualcomm’s platform to “make every speaker, any home pod device, any home router device capable of supporting an assistant.”

In the first half of this year, Qualcomm plans to push a new software development kit based on its smart audio platform to creators in an effort to simplify the development of smart speaker products.

Automotive
Amon reported Qualcomm is also gaining ground in the automotive space, with new partnerships with Jaguar Land Rover, Honda and BYD for Qualcomm infotainment solutions.

The executive explained Qualcomm’s core mobile business represents a $32 billion opportunity through 2020, while its data centre business offers another $19 billion opportunity. But the company is also looking to tackle what it sees as a $77 billion opening in adjacent segments including automotive, IoT, networking and RF front end.

In 2017, Qualcomm pulled in $3 billion in revenue from its automotive segment, with $1 billion stemming from infotainment, Amon added.